High-Level Project Summary
Global warming directly affects human life in many aspects. It influences the energy sector, food production, water and energy consumption as well as human health. Global warming is one of the main causes of heat waves that, besides raising the risk of fires in semi-arid areas, also affects people's health. For example, 70.000 deaths in excess were recorded in Europe, in the summer of 2003. However, these consequences can be avoided. That’s why the Heat Advisor was designed for, using chatbots and PWAs, associated with satellite images, our tool can help victims of these extreme events through alerts, advice and emergency calls with the accountable authorities.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
The Heat Advisor is a solution that uses PWA’s technology and chatbots from messengers, in order to collect user data and help them in emergency situations that may occur due heat waves, like issues directly related to human health impacts, like hyperthermia, worsening of existing pre-conditions, dehydration, pressure drop and other situations that require hospital care. Regarding natural disasters, like fires, it’s possible to report the ongoing situation in real-time, using texts, photos and GPS locations, so the Heat Advisor will be able to trigger all of the necessary agents, in order to help to solve the problem and supply all important information in a safe and fast way.
The contact with the Heat Advisor can be established through a chat messenger. That chat messenger will make use of a chat bot to communicate with the users, as well as use of the website, that can be accessed by desktop or smartphone. As we are talking about a PWA, there is no need of any kind of installation or download. The user data must be provided to the bot through a chat. After the data collect and crossoving with satellites images data, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) will take over of the next steps. This AI will be able to automatically contact the oncharge agents, trigger alerts to users in the region in case of disaster or imminent risk. These alerts follow severity parameters, and they have standard colors for each situation. Green, for a normal situation, Yellow, to keep on alert and take action on prevention methods and Red to indicate the something severe is ongoing.
In addition to the evident assistance functionality in risky situations, the Heat Advisor can also be used to guide users who wish to avoid wasting environmental resources and consequently save financial goods. In order to receive tips on cost reduction, the user must access the site, register and enable location and notification features.
The possibility of contacting emergency agents in aggravating situations easily and quickly is possible through the Heat Advisor chatbots. In addition to making emergency calls simultaneously, support with protection and precautionary instructions is essential to mitigate damage and assist victims during the displacement of authorities. In cases of malaise, instructions are provided to reduce the side effects of heat so that hospital emergencies are avoided and through the dissemination of information the population can be alert to the effects of heat and how to prevent them.
These are some tools that make the development of the Heat Advisor possible, together with some of resources made available by NASA:
- MongoDB (Database)
- HTML
- CSS
- React with TypeScript
- Whatsapp bot
- Google TensorFlow
Space Agency Data
NASA data would be used to match the crowdsourced data. After that, artificial intelligence will process this data to generate disaster prediction models or extreme heat effects that will alert the population, mitigating the effects of climate change. The used resources were:
Nasa/GISS surface analyses
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
Nasa Urban climate change research network
https://www.giss.nasa.gov/projects/impacts/uccrn/
Nasa Earth Data Giovanni
https://giovanni.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/giovanni/
Nasa GLDAS
https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets?page=1&keywords=GLDAS
GEOS NEAR-REAL TIME DATA PRODUCTS
https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/GMAO_products/NRT_products.php
Global Climate Change
https://climate.nasa.gov/
Hackathon Journey
It was an incredible experience. Team work was surprisingly fun, the mentorships really helped a lot and having such a team with such well-communicated members facilitated the journey, turning the experience so much appreciable and funny, despite being tiring. We learned about the heat waves impacts, we developed empathy and tolerance among us, and we could, of course, make good use of the data resources given by NASA. Due to the recent episodes of heat waves that happened during the 2021 year, we believe that this theme will be increasingly present in our daily lives, that is why we choose this challenge, and we proposed a solution that can decrease the impacts of extreme heat and help people to overcome these situations. After choosing the challenge, we immediately thought about the consequences of this year's events, like huge forest fires, health damages, as well as infrastructure damages. There were a few setbacks regarding the solution we’ve developed, some questions appeared about what way we should focus and how to make the solution useful. After some good talks and rest periods we took control of the situation once again. We would like to thanks our teacher and mentor Isabel Sartori, for encouraging us. We would also like to thank our mentor Fernando Guerra, for the really great tips and advices.
References
Artificial intelligence for Predicton Disasters:
Focus Group on AI for Natural Disaster Management --
https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/focusgroups/ai4ndm/Pages/default.aspx
https://itu.int/en/myitu/News/2021/03/24/08/49/AI-natural-hazards-disasters
Increased European heat waves in recent decades in response to shrinking Arctic sea ice and Eurasian snow cover: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-020-0110-8
Increasing trends in regional heatwaves: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16970-7
Global warming threatens human thermoregulation and survival: https://www.jci.org/articles/view/135006
What is crowdsourcing and how can it help us adapt to climate change? : https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/what-is-crowdsourcing-and-how-can-it-help-us-adapt-to-climate-change
Geographic, Demographic, and Temporal Variations in the Association between Heat Exposure and Hospitalization in Brazil: A Nationwide Study between 2000 and 2015: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/EHP3889
Vulnerability to heat-related mortality in Latin America: a case-crossover study in São Paulo, Brazil, Santiago, Chile and Mexico City, Mexico: https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/37/4/796/736370?login=true
The impact of temperature on mortality in a subtropical city: effects of cold, heat, and heat waves in São Paulo, Brazil: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00484-015-1009-7
Climate change and health (WHO)
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health
CDC. Climate and Health Program. Heat Waves [online]. 2009 Dec
14. [cited 2013 Aug 15] Available from URL: http://www.cdc.gov/
climateandhealth/effects/heat.htm
CDC. Features—Keep your cool in hot weather [online]. 2009 Jul 9.
[cited Jun 24]. Available from URL: http://www.cdc.gov/Features/
ExtremeHeat/.
https://www.usfa.fema.gov/data/statistics/reports/fius_2008-2017.html
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18241810/
Tags
#heatwaves #HeatAdvisor #fires #emergencies #climatedisasters #globalwarming #PWA #chatbots #AI #respiratorydiseases #cardiovasculardiseases
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.